The day after you get funded
I thought today was an interesting day. After weeks of doing the juggling act of pitching investors, pitching potential customers, negotiating deal terms, filling out paperwork, dealing with people that are still trying to get that “little bit extra” — you close your round and you get funded.
Its that magical moment right? Its what you’d been waiting for right? The press starts writing about you, the Congratulations come flying in. You’ve made it. Right? Wrong.
We made our funding announcement yesterday. Here’s a rough list of what I did today:
- Answered 52 customer service emails
- Debugged sync issues, identity verification issues and looked into performance issues
- Closed the loop on the last few wire transfers
- Talked to Derek about our priorities for the week, updated Pivotal, prioritized my own task list so that he isn’t blocked on anything
- Went through Apple’s enrollment process, made sure the right things were signed, accounts were updated, team was invited, etc.
- Coordinated with our contract iPhone developer and made sure he’s got his list of priorities for the week
- Made plans and booked tickets and hotel for our NYC Community Manager to come out here for a few days and get acquainted
- Created a Tout group of family members and close friends that I’ve been neglecting since I moved to California and updated them on my life and told them to write back
- Created a Tout group of investors and updated them on the funding round and the company in general
- Posted job listings for our Designer and Front End Engineer positions
- Responded to my huge (and growing) backlog of emails — mostly having to do with business development
- Grabbed dinner with my wife (who is now living in NY but is visiting for a couple of days) to celebrate our 4 years together. Ironically, our first date was at a restaurant right across from the 500 Startups office
- Troubleshooted and thought through some bugs/changes with Derek
- Answered some more customer service emails
- Looked at our backlog and felt the pain again of how we need to make some more key hires so started to reach out to people in my personal network about the open positions
- And on and on and on it went…
What’s the point? The point is that the day after you get funded is like any other day that you are running your business. Getting funded is not some magical event where all your worries go away. It is not some big party to pop the champagne over. Its the time where you buckle down even more so that you can make it rain.
The day after you get funded, you still have to deal with the real fundamentals of your business. You still have to build your actual business, and you have to actually plan and execute so that you can actually deliver all those things you promised your Investors when you took their money.
And that folks, is what a day after you get funded looks like.
